Clearly Not Human - Paranormal Sci-Fi Alien Romance: Alien Integration Book 2, page 1
Clearly Not Human - Paranormal Sci-Fi Alien Romance
Alien Integration Book Two
Pearl Tate
CLEARLY NOT HUMAN
Copyright © 2023
Pearl Tate
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner.
Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Book Cover Design by Alena Marie
Instagram Account: https://www.instagram.com/alenamarieartistry/
This book is dedicated to my cute cat who keeps me company while I'm writing.
About Clearly Not Human
Is this guy crazy? Or am I? Because I’m convinced he’s not quite human…
I can’t watch my brothers die. It’s doesn’t matter whether it’s from getting sick and turning into a mindless zombie or getting shot by looters who have taken over the food markets. My heart can’t take it.
Everything in my life has fallen apart in the last four months. My boyfriend and I broke up, so I ended up moving back home. Then this crazy new virus started spreading out from the big cities. Now both my parents are missing, and I’m left grieving while trying to be strong for my younger siblings.
I have to be tough and figure out how we’re going to get through this. So when I’m captured by men at one of the local markets, I’m thankful my brothers get away.
Better me than them. But an unlikely hero arrives, a miracle really, and my life’s turned upside down—again.
It’s clear to me he’s different with life-saving gifts that save not only me but also my brother. But I can tell he’s not being one hundred percent honest with me. Does it really matter when he’s saving lives?
I’m drawn to him, knowing I’ll never meet anyone like him again. Can I keep him from leaving?
Even with his help, will it be enough to save us all?
A steamy paranormal sci-fi alien romance for adults. Happy for now, always guaranteed.
Contents
1. Chapter One
2. Chapter Two
3. Chapter Three
4. Chapter Four
5. Chapter Five
6. Chapter Six
7. Chapter Seven
8. Chapter Eight
9. Chapter Nine
10. Chapter Ten
11. Chapter Eleven
12. Chapter Twelve
13. Chapter Thirteen
14. Chapter Fourteen
15. Chapter Fifteen
16. Chapter Sixteen
17. Chapter Seventeen
18. Chapter Eighteen
19. Chapter Nineteen
20. Chapter Twenty
21. Chapter Twenty One
22. Chapter Twenty Two
23. Chapter Twenty Three
24. Chapter Twenty Four
25. Chapter Twenty Five
26. Chapter Twenty Six
27. Chapter Twenty Seven
28. Chapter Twenty Eight
29. Chapter Twenty Nine
Sneak Peek - Blood Compelled
Sneak Peek - Sinth Savior
About Pearl Tate
Alien Romance by Pearl Tate
Chapter One
Rose
“Get down!”
I yank on my younger brother’s arm, frustrated that were pinned down like this. There’s no way I can live with myself if I have to see someone else in my family infected by this terrible disease. All it takes is one wrong move, attracting the attention of the wandering sick, and we’ll be running for our lives.
Literally.
The threatening rain clouds overhead throw dark shadows where we’re hunched down in the brush on the edge of the forest. It’s almost surreal, it’s so unbelievable.
I wish my younger brothers would’ve let me come alone. There’s nothing that scares me more than thinking about watching them die.
“I can take him—”
That’s all I catch from Jonas before he turns away. Another frustrating aspect of reading lips.
“No!” I tug his small, twelve-year-old body down beside me.
Aaron’s darker head leans in front of my face, waving his hands as he signs, “You’re too loud. Keep your voice down.”
Jonas and I glance at each other briefly, before we all turn our heads to peer out between the leaves at the one-armed sick man. He’s lumbering down the road only twenty feet away. How can he be up and walking like that?
When we first heard about the strange disease that was sweeping across the country, we all figured I’d never hit a rural town like ours. With a population of only twenty thousand, it seemed far away and totally unlikely. But it did.
Like a wildfire, person after person came down with it in the larger cities. Then crowds of the infected migrated out of the urban areas, chasing and infecting everyone else. They seem to be attracted to everyone alive. And they bite them, even ripping them apart.
Like this guy.
Our mother never stood a chance. She just never came home from her nightly patrol. She served as a local deputy on our small-town police force.
Our father was heartbroken. I knew he wanted to go look for her, but he took care of us. Thankfully, we live in a neighborhood close to town, although our neighbors aren’t close. Mostly spread out farms.
“I can take him from here,” Jonas signs, gesturing down to the slingshot at his feet. His red face almost matches his hair, and I drop my knife on the dirt by the gas can between my bent knees to squeeze his shoulder lightly.
I appreciate his daring, but now is not the time.
Aaron and I glance at each other, and I shake my head hard. I don’t care if we take all day to get the fuel and food that we need. There’s no reason to risk our lives.
“No,” I sign, shaking my head at the same time.
Thankfully, Aaron backs me up, shaking his head too. His white knuckle grip on the bat he’s been carrying betrays his nerves. He’d set it down to sign, but now both his hands are twisting the old wood from his middle school days.
I can barely breathe, panting lightly as I watch the sick man lumbering away. The flapping arm of his short sleeve is dripping with gore and blood.
For whatever reason, the sick can keep on walking, even if the damage to their bodies would kill an ordinary person. And they never stop walking. I’ve never seen one asleep.
“There’s no sense in wasting your ammo.”
As ridiculous as it sounds, those little clay balls for his slingshot are all we have to protect us from the sick. And I know from experience, hitting them in the body won’t take them down. It has to be the head.
A few nights to go, I took this same path in an attempt to get any snacks or remaining food from the gas station. But the only thing I ran into was my mother. Still dressed in her uniform, she chased me like she didn’t recognize me. A blank stare and dried blood were the only things on her face.
I barely escaped.
My saving grace was she didn’t appear to remember where she lived, either. Otherwise, she would’ve been at our house, knowing exactly where I’d run.
Did my dad run into her too? Is that why he didn’t come back five nights ago from his weekly run to get food and fuel for our generator?
We’ll never know unless we run into him like I did our mother.
It’s something I haven’t had the heart to tell my brothers about.
“Let’s go,” Aaron hisses, standing before he picks up the gas can he was perched on.
Bending, I grab the large kitchen knife I’m carrying and the second gas can in my other hand. My trembling palm is sweating so badly, I hope I can carry it when it’s full.
I gesture to Jonas to get between us. His boyish face is all wide-eyed and determined as he falls into step behind Aaron’s lanky frame, holding his sling shot loaded and ready.
Fuck.
Watching where we step, we creep through the underbrush on the side of the road, following an old bike trail. It’s overgrown and deserted, but I still keep an eye on the path behind us, glancing around quickly to make sure I don’t miss anything.
Even though I can’t hear, that doesn’t mean I don’t hear sounds. The trees sing with a low hum and the strange higher buzz I’ve been hearing for days is getting louder. I don’t know what it is, but it seems to escalate the further we get toward the main road at the corner. The intersection where the gas station sits is only another half a mile.
I haven’t been able to hear since I was a child. The doctors called the fact that I can still hear things, auditory synesthesia. It’s a rare known condition. And something I don’t talk about because it’s hard to explain and doesn’t make much sense.
Since the power went out, it’s definitely gotten quieter in my head. Electronics, cell phone towers, and even lights give off their own strange symphony of sounds around me. But that has certainly died down.
Stopping at the edge of the forest directly behind the gas station, we all c
At least I don’t see our mom.
Off in the distance, three people are walking the opposite way. It’s easy to tell from their lumbering walk that they’re sick. Infected with the disease that, for all intents and purposes, has turned everyone exposed into zombies. Mindless and predatory.
Killers.
“I’ll go alone,” Aaron whispers, still gripping the large five-gallon can in one hand and his bat in the other.
“We agreed.” I reply, shaking my head at his statement. “We are coming with you. Three is better than one.”
We decided we’d all go together for supplies. And stick together. Otherwise, I would’ve left these two and tried it again on my own.
I’m not sure what’s worse, wondering if someone is dead or knowing they are. Like our mom.
Is she dead?
With the injuries most of these infected people have, is there any way to come back from that? They must be dead, right?
I hold my breath as I follow Aaron from the tree line, circling around the side of the gravel parking lot and keeping our distance from the building. From the side of the gas station, it appears deserted and empty. But if we get in there and trapped, there’s a good fifty feet with nowhere to hide until the trees.
It’d be hard to get out and be safe if we end up surrounded.
“We go together.” My voice is probably louder than it should be based on the way Aaron brings the bat up to his lips.
Why am I letting him lead?
I’m the oldest. The only adult too, since Aaron’s only a senior this year.
Gravel crunches under my boots as I quicken my steps, moving in a straight line to the pumps. “Keep your sling shot ready, Jonas. I’m bait. Run like hell after your first shot and I’ll be right on your heels.”
I outran three, including my mother last time. They aren’t that fast.
Losing them is the trick, since they never stop moving and keep looking for you. But I’m determined to get this over with.
Chapter Two
Gavin
Fifteen years. Fucking hell!
I stare in shock at the newspaper as I clean the grease off my hands, wondering how to get the paper out without change. It’s displayed in a rusty dispenser, one of the old kind that only takes quarters.
I glance over at the pile of decomposing bodies of the sick only a hundred feet or so away and contemplate picking the pockets of one of the dead. They’ve accumulated in a pile on the side of the peeling cinder block garage.
But I can’t do it.
Give me grease under my nails any day. Not blood.
Turning my attention back to the newspaper, I study the date, wondering how old it is. How long has it been since they delivered this? I’ll have to ask Hank, the owner of the bike shop I’m at.
Throwing the rag down, I let my eyes drift over the landscape, noting the distinctive purple frequency of Ivan heading this way. I’m slightly surprised, because I wasn’t sure he’d come back.
But fifteen years. I swallow hard, realizing it’s half my life.
That’s a long time to be in captivity. Ivan and I only escaped a few days ago.
I don’t pretend to understand how we escaped, either. We were in a holding cell when these guys just magically appeared, grabbed us, and disappeared us out.
Quick and simple.
And frankly, I’ve stopped worrying about the how and why. I’ve seen so many incredible things that the doctors have made us capable of. It boggles the mind.
When our rescuers dumped us on a lawn, Ivan hissed, “Run!” There was a subtle push to the command that I’ve noticed he seems to be able to do.
He used the same tactic while we were doing combat training, and it’s a handy trick. But I couldn’t have agreed with him more.
We all ran.
There were four of us that escaped when the strange look-alike guys grabbed. We were the last in holding cells after our most recent training by our alien doctor captors. There’s no way they could be anything but that—with their scaled skin and bald heads.
Now, the last fifteen years are making a lot more sense. There are definitely aliens on our green and blue planet, and they’re manipulating us all.
Dropping to my knees, I work quickly on the Harley in front of me. I’ve only got one more thing to do, and this baby should purr like a kitten. It’s the second Harley I fixed, and Ivan is off on the first, taking it for a test drive ride.
Memories of working on my foster dad’s Harley flit through my mind. At least I still have them.
Memories kept me alive for the last fifteen years. That and the hope of escape, and now that I have accomplished that, I’m not going back.
After a minor scuffle in high school, I ended up in juvie. They called it “excessive force.” Yeah, yeah, I’m a big guy. But I’ve never backed down from a fight—especially when I didn’t start it.
That time just got a little out of hand.
But even after that, I still thought I’d get re-homed for a few years until I hit eighteen. Not shipped off to some strange experimental lab, where aliens could manipulate me.
I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. My foster mom had been hinting for over a year that she wanted a new baby. Those systems only allowed so many kids per residence, and I was the oldest.
I’m tightening the bolt as Ivan’s knucklehead comes into view, vibrating the gravel beneath my knees as he slides up next to me.
The motor cuts off abruptly, and Ivan’s large frame swings from the seat. “How’s it going?”
“Great.”
I climb to my feet, shading my eyes from the sun. “I was just about to test this one now.”
“Ivan?” The weak call from the shop owner Hank drifts through the dry air, tinging the colors that vibrate around me in a deep maroon brown.
He’s definitely going to turn soon. All the sick people wandering the countryside give off a burnt brown frequency I can see around them. Just one of the many weird enhancements done to me, as the doctors called it.
Fuckers.
A part of me wishes I hadn’t run. Payback would be nice. But I’m no hero, and I can’t save everyone.
Ivan’s already moving to the overhead door, calling out, “I’m coming.“
It’s his turn to deal with Hank, the rotund owner of this garage. He’s sick, and in a bad way, but we learned more from him than anyone else.
Hank explained how the strange infection spread across the country, turning regular everyday folks into walking killing machines.
After people get the disease, it takes anywhere from a couple days to a week before they turn into raging lunatics. By that time, they’re running around, biting others, and infecting them. And according to Hank, ripping people apart and eating them.
Disgusting.
We haven’t seen that yet, but we’ve avoided any larger towns. The evidence of this claim is clear to see on the dead bodies Hank accumulated around the property. He calls them, "Goners," and says they weren't alive anyway. That'd he never killed before, but it was life or death.
He would know.
Thankfully, Ivan has a keen eye, and knew how to circumvent the strange military base we ended up on when we were rescued. One minute we were in our cells, the next we were on the lawn of a home on the military’s property.
The trickiest part was getting outside the base without getting caught. But I can easily see when someone is coming based on the frequency their body gives off. With my early warning, and Ivan’s know-how, we escaped.
We don’t know what happened to the other two guys rescued with us. I saw the one scale a tree, breaking off from us, but the other just disappeared.
I hope they got out. If they’re anything like me, they deserve it.
Fucking fifteen years.
I swing my leg over the bike, settling into the seat of the shovelhead and bouncing the frame a bit. It feels good.
Kicking in the motor, it rumbles to life and vibrates between my thighs. It’s a familiar sensation I never thought I’d get to experience again, and for the first time in days, a sense of elation fills me.
